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YouTube announced Thursday it is disabling comments on videos with minors

The announcement comes one week after advertisers pulled spending due to reports on a network of pedophiles in the comments of videos

YouTube is disabling comments on videos with minors, the company said in a blog post Thursday.

The announcement comes a week after advertisers including AT&T, Hasbro, Disney and Nestle pulled their ads from the Google-owned platform following reports of an active pedophile network in the comments of videos. Wired reported last week that some pedophiles will use the comments section of videos featuring kids to share timestamps where child nudity can be seen.

Now, YouTube is taking new steps to address the issue, starting with disabling comments entirely from most videos featuring children. YouTube said it was already taken this step over the past week for tens of millions of videos "that could be subject to predatory behavior." It plans to expand the effort to videos featuring both younger and older minors "at risk of attracting predatory behavior," YouTube said in the blog.

Still, a "small number of creators" will continue to have comments enabled on this category of videos, but "will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior," according to YouTube.

In addition to disabling comments, YouTube said it will launch a new classifier that it believes will be more effective at identifying and removing predatory comments.